With the prospect of free Australian food and beer, what self respecting Aussie wouldn't turn up to Googleplex in Silicon Valley to say "G'day Google"?

The Aussie expat grapevine worked well, with well over 150 people turning out last week to learn what Google's been up to down under. In the spirit of the evening, there was Australian beer and wine, lamb chops, lamingtons and other Aussie delicacies. Best of all was the opportunity for the Sydney Google Engineers to chat with some amazingly talented Australian expats, pursuing a range of careers abroad - including software engineers, scientific researchers, business development professionals and more.

It was great to hear the Aussie accents throughout the room. Interestingly, many of the people I spoke with had left Australia for Silicon Valley with the intention of working here for only a year or two, but ended up staying 4 years, 11 years, 13 years and more. There's obviously a love by Australian engineers and technology workers for Silicon Valley, but there's an unmistakable fondness for Australia as well.

Alan Noble, our Engineering Director in Australia, is in the same boat - he left Adelaide to head to Silicon Valley, only to come back to work for Google. Alan introduced the event with a presentation about the Google business in Australia and our strong focus on building our research and development team in Australia. He outlined some of the game-changing innovations that have come out of Australia in the past -- for instance, the world's first feature film, the pacemaker and Google's very own "Google Maps." Alan said his personal hope is that many of Google's future innovations will come from Google Australia.

Thank you to everyone who came to the event. We hope you had a great evening. We really enjoyed meeting all of you. I'm assured that a video of the event on YouTube is coming soon!

P.S. if you are a talented Australian software engineer working overseas and would like to return home, why not check out our jobs page!